


with or without water

by invisible_cities



Series: the roads were heaven-made [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Family Reunions, Gen, Grief/Mourning, in ur canon Forcing it to make sense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-03 00:31:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10955958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/invisible_cities/pseuds/invisible_cities
Summary: For a Jedi, age is more than just a number.





	with or without water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cross_d_a](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cross_d_a/gifts).



> Un-betaed, and the first in a series which will be posted before 'The Last Jedi' is released, before it gets thoroughly Jossed.
> 
> The series is going to consist of fix-it fics for 'The Force Awakens', with 'fix-it' meaning not having the characters live happily ever after (not that I don't enjoy it sometimes), but FORCING THE WORLD TO MAKE SENSE. It's not necessarily nice sense.

Luke is barely fifty three years old, and he feels ancient.

There is enough wide, empty space, enough water, on Ahch-To for him to breathe, to rest, to recenter himself after the massacre, enough uncomplicated life to buffer him while he struggles with his own heartbreak and grief, the waves around his more-or-less home low enough to soothe and high enough that he remembers, blood and salt-spattered hair, what a coming sandstorm feels like. The ruins are a good reminder, the few holocrons left – an even better one.

Luke chose his place of exile very, very carefully, and in exchange, Ahch-To has been kind to him. He is centered, for all that the hollow grief has yet to completely disappear in the Force; he doubts it ever will. He is tired, but feels like he should, maybe, finally rejoin the sentient living in a little while.

He feels old, yes, but not so heavy with it that he cannot act.

Then he feels the Hosnian system go. Not that he knows it's one of the capital systems of the New Republic – with its billions of sentient inhabitants – being wiped out of existence. What he knows is that there is something shattering in him, to echo the universe outside, something the Force tells him is too horrible for pain, and later, he will understand why Ben Kenobi had been so ready to die, in the aftermath of Jedha, of Alderaan. Had he been trained at the time...

Well. The young are resilient, maybe he would have made it off the Death Star anyway. Maybe. He doubts it.

Then, still reeling and shatteringly empty, he feels something _tear_ through him, mind and heart and marrow, leaving behind empty spaces, tendrils bleeding light and hurt. _Han _. This was the absence of one of his best friends, the certainty that someone he'd been anchored to was _gone_ , and that he'd been untrained enough not to leave an echo in the Force. __

__The pain is worse, on a personal level, than the deaths of his students, and they haunt him still, almost a decade and a half after. _Then_ he thinks of Leia._ _

__The sandstorm is about to hit._ _

__Force damn it._ _

__***_ _

__The girl shows up, in a very familiar ship. So do Chewie and Artoo. Luke has to fight to keep a steady expression. Solitude has left him unaccustomed to controlling his face - not that he's ever been anything but expressive, even at the height of his Jedi career._ _

__Rey calls him out into the wider galaxy, and grief or no, age or no, it's time to go._ _

__Why does he feel so ancient, anyway? He meditates on what he knows, folds into himself and the light as the familiar corridors of the _Falcon_ echo with absences. The islands and oceans and ruins and birds of Ahch-To behind him, he puts together fact and intuition._ _

__In the absence of any immediate violent conflict, humans in the Core can live well past a hundred years nowadays, even past a century and a half, with access to good food and decent medical care. That's the ones who are not Force sensitive. The fall of the Republic and the rule of the Empire have shortened the average human lifespan, yes, especially since it was mostly the young at the front lines, but..._ _

__Even cocooned in the Light, he misses Ben – Ben's ghost, Ben's wisdom, Ben's kind wry smile – so much it aches. Ben had been barely past sixty when he died, and looked _old_. Luke has been putting it down mostly to the harsh conditions on Tattoine, but legends had Force-sensitives living twice, thrice the natural lifespan of their species, and Ben... Ben was strong in the Force, pared down to a receptacle of light in the body of a higly suspect hermit. If the reason he'd aged so rapidly was **not** the extreme climate of Tatooine alone..._ _

__Everything, even epiphanies, is muted when one is deep in a meditative trance, but the Jedi kneeling uncomfortably on the cold metal grating of the cargo hold on a beloved, _dead_ friend's ship is pretty sure he's experiencing one. Not the suns and sands alone, then. The _grief_... or rather, the broken bonds. That's why Ben had aged so rapidly. That's why Luke had to just... go away, after Kylo Ren (another Ben, little dark-haired Ben with his surly mouth and surly mind and prism-wide eyes) had killed his students. That's why he feels like like Han's death added decades to his shoulders, why Luke's beard went more salt than pepper in less than a week. _ _

__The Jedi can live long, healthy lives, cradled by the Force and the people they are tethered to. When the tethers snap, one by one – or, Force forbid, almost all at once – the recoil is deadly. If the Jedi in question is a good one, capable of releasing most of their grief? Only to them. If they _aren't_... _ _

__Another piece falls into place. His father, fallen, taking decades to reclaim what little goodness he could grasp at, in the hour of his death._ _

__Luke unfolds, the grating leaving a lattice of indentations on his creaky knees. He goes to find Chewie, and they spend a good long while silent. Then Chewie howls, low and mournfufl, and Luke knows enough Shyriwook to recognize the sound for what it is. Lack of words, mostly, and an abundance of shared understanding. He sits a little longer, and then makes his way to wherever Artoo is hiding. It turns out to be under the galley table._ _

__(Whoever insisted that droids have no Force presence – and Luke has perused a few holocrons authoritatively stating just that – has clearly never encountered Artoo. Or Threepio. Because banthashit they don't have a Force presence.)_ _

__Luke might have spent a good long while in exile, without any droids around, but he remembers enough binary to listen. Then he nods his head in commiseration, makes a general sound of agreement, and taps out against his friend's casing a litany of swear words that would have made his late friend proud._ _

__Artoo beeps a few more times, then falls – creakily and crankily – silent. So does Luke. At least they can be old and creaky (and fine, fine, cranky too) together._ _

__***_ _

__Rey's presence on the _Falcon_ is a good thing. Leia's on D'Qar? Having his sister this close is incadescent and soothes some of the ragged edges left by... by his students, by the Hosnian system, by Han. He has no idea how she could have managed - past Alderaan, past... so many things after - to retain a Force presence this bright, this warm, but he'll take it and be desperately grateful._ _

__After his sister reads him the riot act (and Luke very carefully does not point out that nobody just _loses_ the coordinates to a known world, Jedi shenanigans had been involved, because he is a reasonably smart man and it does not take precognitive abilities to know when you are risking being strangled with someone's braid) she hugs him, close, close, closer, and they both feel, for a moment, too short._ _

__Then there's a sensation of strong arms falling down around their shoulders, ghostly pins and needles and a rueful laugh, and they share a startled glance, starting to move apart – Chewie's enormous paws reel them in, by their shoulders, into another hug. Artoo bumps into Luke's knees (knees, not thighs, he's not that short, Forcedammit) and beeps a few times. Quietly. Luke relaxes into them and feels lighter, younger, than he has in years._ _

__So much for Jedi situational awareness._ _


End file.
